Well, this is it! The last episode before another shockwave tears throughout the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Then one more episode before the “two hour finale”. Which means two weeks until a major cliffhanger that will drive you crazy for a week. But for now, let’s focus on the present.

Dirty Half Dozen – Review

We open with one of Raina’s premonitions, and Jiaying watching her sleep. Raina says she saw Lincoln being held somewhere, being operated on. There’s a zapping noise and Cal screaming for his wife, so Jiaying goes to investigate. Cal is fairly upset, but staying surprisingly under control for someone with a legitimate point.

Skye is concerned that Lincoln is still out there and sends Gordon back to investigate. He pops back in moments later, forehead scarred and bleeding. He got away in time, but reveals Hydra took Lincoln.

Also, Raina realizes that the dreams might really be premonitions.

Gonzales interrogates Coulson. Coulson tells Gonzales that Hydra has set up a base in the Arctic to experiment on powered people. They go back and forth on Deathlok’s allegiance, Coulson’s trustworthiness, Gonzales’ secret in the cargo hold of his ship, until Coulson agrees to open Fury’s box if Gonzales can trust him.

Skye asks why Lincoln was there, and wonders how to get him back. Jiaying knows exactly what Hydra is capable of (she went through it hereself with Whitehall), but she suspects Hydra is tracking Gordon’s movements, so she refuses to let anyone in or out of the city to attempt a rescue.

Lincoln and Mike wake up in the Hydra facility. They introduce each other through the wall of their adjoining cells. Deathlok’s weapons have been disabled, and Lincoln knows that his people won’t be coming for him.

Dr. List is communicating with Strucker, who wants to see the new subjects in person. By his side is Bakshi, who is being very agreeable, and towing the Hydra line without wavering at all. They get ready to move forward with the experimentation and electro-knock-out Mike and Lincoln.

Coulson has told his plan to Gonzales, who questions why send a small infiltration team instead of a large assault. Coulson wants to rescue, rather than sacrifice, and has hand-picked his own team for the task.

Hunter and Fitz are disgusted with the relationship between Ward and Kara. Ward assures Kara that there’s still one more thing he needs from Coulson before everything’s over, and it will fulfill his promise to Kara. They get the green light, and head to base to meet up with the rest of the team. Gonzales immediately puts Ward and Kara under surveillance. May is skeptical, but willing to see what happens.

Coulson shows the last recorded feed from Deathlok’s eye, which shows Hydra removing it. They no longer have a way of spying into the base, other than Grant Ward’s connection with Bakshi, who is sending encoded messages over unused Hydra frequencies. Everyone is skeptical, but Coulson is willing to move forward. The plan is put up to a vote, with Gonzales and Bobbi voting for, and Weaver and Oliver voting against. The tie-breaker is Agent May, who asks for a private word with Coulson first.

Fitz and Simmons are reconnecting, and it almost seems close to how things used to be. Fitz is smug about attacking Ward, and says he should have thrown Ward from the plane. Simmons suggests a better method of attacking him with a splinter bomb (the ones made using obelisk tech…why does she have a case of them?). Fitz thinks she’s joking and then slowly starts realizing that she’s serious.

May and Coulson have it out about the secrecy about his overseas trips. He refuses to tell her about “Theta Protocol” because she’s not director of SHIELD, and May fires back that he isn’t either, anymore. May is upset about Coulson seeing her ex Andrew without telling her. Coulson reveals it was just for counseling for his alien writing impulses. They at least get to the point where they can put the personal stuff behind them for the good of the mission.

Raina tells Skye about her vision, and that Skye is the only one who can save Lincoln. Skye fires off a jab about Sonic the Hedgehog, and Raina only responds by asking why Coulson would be working with Ward. Skye realizes there’s truth to this, and is willing to listen. The compromise is for Gordon to drop Skye off a long way from Hydra.

Ward encourages Kara to reconnect with her past – she was a SHIELD agent before Whitehall brainwashed it out of her. She stays behind on base while Ward goes on the mission. Bobbi stays behind because the deal was for Coulson to only use his own people, in case it does turn out to be a suicide mission. Simmons packs herself a splinter bomb and demands to go on the mission, under the guise that they need someone to look after Mike’s injuries. Coulson tells her to suit up.

The team boards the plane – May, Ward, Coulson, Fitz, Simmons. They hear a noise, and it turns out to be Skye already on board waiting for them. And the happiest one is Ward because they finally got the team back together.

Fitz and Simmons are eager to hear everything about Skye’s whereabouts recently, but Skye is not too eager to talk about personal stuff in front of Ward. Coulson calls everyone together and gives Ward the floor to brief the team. However, the tension in the room is very obvious, and Ward decides to address the elephant in the room. The plane. Whatever. He says that really what he regrets the most is breaking up the family. It really doesn’t help things.

Coulson splits the group into two teams: Skye, Simmons, and Ward on rescue. Coulson, Fitz, and May on intel gathering. And he encourages Ward to stop talking to people.

Jiaying walks in on Cal pacing, and he tries to prove that his temper is improved. She justifies why she tried to send him away, but she allows him to stay until things calm down a bit and stops being so dangerous. She asks him about Raina, and he says that she’s manipulative, deceitful, and dangerous, and to keep an eye on her.

Mack and Hunter reconnect on base, and Mack for some reason tells Hunter that Coulson’s in the office (instead of on the mission, which he is). Meanwhile, Kara is getting tested by SHIELD scientists. Bobbi comes in and talks to her one on one, but like a person. She says that she and Kara met a few times, so if she starts remembering anything to talk to Bobbi for help going through it. Kara is sure that once everyone sees the real Grant Ward, they’ll know what a good guy he is.

Bakshi and Dr. List doubt Lincoln and Deathlok will make it past the next phase of testing. No one else has other than the “twins”, who are being held in Segovia. They detect a cloaked plane incoming, and realize it must be SHIELD. List makes the call to shoot them out of the sky.

Everyone on the plane buckles in, and the missiles land a direct hit, blowing the plane to pieces. However, everyone is safe inside a mini plane, which May is piloting in a controlled free fall to make it look like they’re just another piece of debris. They touch down and infiltrate the base. Bakshi takes out a guard who was following him, and meets up with the team. Ward insta-hypnotizes Bakshi and gets the needed intel – where everything is located, etc. Bakshi asks to joins Ward’s team, and the teams split up. Ominously.

Bakshi gets them into the lab with a security code, and Dr. List immediately escapes. Skye jumps out from cover and uses her powers to knock back the soldiers firing at them. They find Mike, still alive but in bad shape. Simmons goes in to help him and Skye goes off to find Lincoln.

May and Coulson take out some guards and Fitz starts hacking the computers.

Simmons sends Ward to find a gurney, while Simmons tells Mike how she took an opportunity to do “the right thing”

Skye fights her way through the lab to find Lincoln, already dead. She concentrates her powers on Lincoln’s chest and jump starts his heart – literally only she could have saved him at that point.

And then Simmons straight up arms a splinter bomb and throws it at Ward. Bakshi jumps in the line of fire to protect him, and ends up completely disintegrating. Ward is completely off guard at this point, shocked as we all are that Simmons would do that to someone on her own team (even if just for now). Simmons stands up for her decision and dares Ward to shoot her. He doesn’t, and tells her he’s disappointed in her.

Meanwhile, May has lost Coulson. She finds him in another room downloading more information onto a flash drive – a part of the plan she didn’t know about. She threatens to kill him if he doesn’t move, just as his data is done transferring, so they leave. Simmons and Skye take Mike and Lincoln to the plane and Coulson, May, and Fitz join them. They clear the airspace and Gonzales’ planes blow the base apart.

Ward took his own path out. He calls Coulson, and tells him that he doesn’t deserve forgiveness, but Kara does. He instructs Coulson to take care of Kara because Ward is not the right man to fix the damage that’s been done. He disappears into the wind.

Fitz and Simmons tell Mike that Hydra dismantled his leg, and they’ve already gotten in touch with a facility that can repair him. Gonzales is happy that there are now powered people on base, and he plans on keeping it that way. He wants to learn how many more powered people are out there. Coulson unlocks Fury’s toolbox and “spoiler alert” tells Gonzales to have fun until Fury shows up and asks for it back. Coulson gets on a video chat with Maria Hill.

Jiaying talks with Raina about her visions, and how she used them to convince Skye to rescue Lincoln. From now on, all decisions based on Raina’s gift have to go through Jiaying. Raina proposes that maybe it’s time for someone else to lead. And then is siezed with a vision of Loki’s sceptre.

Coulson shows Hill the intel on Loki’s sceptre, and suspects it may be in Sekovia.

Maria Hill asks Coulson if Theta Protocol is ready, and Coulson says it’s time to bring in the Avengers.

Raina continues about men made of metal tearing our cities apart, and the world will be changed forever.

Review

Okay, first of all, what the heck happened to you, Simmons? She had this dark moment at the beginning of the season with her fear of powered people, and now she has a case filled with very deadly weapons that she intends to use cold-heartedly against a human. Any human. Yes, Grant Ward did a lot of awful things, yes someone should do something about it, but no no no Simmons. Bad Simmons.

And what makes it worse is that the only person with any inkling about that even maybe happening is Fitz. No one else saw it but Ward, and I 100% doubt we’ll see him again for a very long time. He tends to show up for a while, then disappear even longer.

In my mind, Simmons may as well be Hydra. She’s lost her heart and her compassion, and that’s the true mark of Hydra – not that it’s anti-SHEILD. Ward once said “while a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent is considering right and wrong, HYDRA’s already taken the shot.” Simmons took the shot. And that has to get addressed. Soon. And it breaks my heart.

Moving on.

Is anyone else REALLY skeptical of Bobbi’s motives when she tells Kara to talk to her when she starts remembering things? Look at that scene again. “Hey, we knew each other…what do you remember?” “Bits and pieces” “When you remember more, come talk to me”. Bobbi has a secret that Kara knows but can’t remember. And she does not want it getting out. What’s that all about?

My mom thinks it has to do with where we first met Bobbi – undercover in Hydra. But SHIELD set up that cover, so surely there’s nothing extremely troublesome there, right? It’s got to be something bigger, and more troublesome for her and SHIELD at large. And I have no idea what.

Speaking of secrets I don’t know – what’s on Gonzales’ ship? It’s been there since the day SHIELD fell. It could be a powered person, a weapon, or something else entirely. Will it play into Ultron?

Speaking of Ultron, in all the previews and sneak peeks, we see a lot of the metal men, yes. We see the twins, sure. I don’t think I’ve seen or heard anything about Loki’s sceptre since the end of Captain America II, when we saw Strucker and List in the lab. It has the power to control minds, and it is in Hydra possession. So there’s something to expect to see. Of course, Maria Hill has the intel on it, and knows where the base is, so when you hear the word “Segovia,” know what to expect there.

And then there’s Theta Protocol. Very calmly, not in a crisis, Coulson tells Hill it’s time to call in the Avengers. The last time the Avengers were called together was to address the threat posed by Loki and the Tesseract and the mind-controlled Hawkeye. There was a problem, the Avengers were called in to fix it.

Are they being called to fight Hydra? To address the Inhumans thing that isn’t really even that well known yet? We know the movie is going to be about Ultron, but we also know that they don’t really know about Ultron until they’re already assembled. So what is the original reason? AND since Coulson decides it’s time to call them together…is he going to make an appearance to them? Common sense says no, but Joss Whedon and the writers do like to mess with us just a little bit, don’t they?

Speaking of the upcoming movie, I’m worried about Raina saying “the world will never be the same”.

SHIELD fell at the end of Captain America II. It was revealed that Hydra still existed, in full force. But at the end of the day, people still go to Starbucks, play games on their phones, go to theme parks, drive cars down freeways. The universe of the secret organizations changed, but in all practicality, life carried on as usual.

That does not seem like the case after Age of Ultron. Maybe to some degree life carries on as usual, but how far reaching are the “consequences”.

You have until next Tuesday to go see Age of Ultron to find out. Next week, the repercussions get felt in Agents of SHIELD.